Encounter In A Small Town
by Dannell Lites
Summary: Clark meets a new friend:):)


Encounter In A Small Town: The Walking Man  
  
By: Dannell Lites  
  
  
  
SPIFFY DISCLAIMER THINGIE!  
  
Ah do not own Methos. That would be Panzer Davis Productions. Likewise Ah do not own Smallville nor Clark Kent. That would be DC Comics and the WB:):) This is a fanfic for entertainment purposes only and not intended to infringe upon copyrights held by the above nor anyone else! So don't sue moi:):)  
  
Rated G for absolute purity of content: No sex, no drugs, no Rock and Roll:):) Only a tiny mention of any possible naughtiness:):)  
  
The poem/song "Tammuz" rightfully belongs to John Myers Myers and his wonderful fantasy novel "Silverlock":):) It is used without permission, although NOT without many thanks and a great deal of gratitude! G  
  
Now - on with the fic!  
  
  
  
  
  
The man was odd.  
  
No question about that. Tall and rangy, dressed in study flannel and jeans, he strode confidently along the gravel road leading into Smallville, Kansas. His stride was measured, though his long legs ate the distance quickly. He could keep up this pace for hours on end one felt, if necessary. This was a man used to walking, that was plain. Hatless, his dark hair tickled his ears and the nape of his neck. His feet were shod in heavy, well worn English hiking boots that seemed to hug his feet like a lover. But this was no aimless wanderer, one felt. No. This one had a destination; a purpose. A detination shrouded in mystery, perhaps. A purpose cloaked and hidden, true ...  
  
But, a destination and a purpose, nonetheless, for all of that  
  
The lonely young man, tottering on the precipace of burgeoning manhood, watched him as he strode along and narrowed his eyes. Picking up strangers was not a good idea. He knew that. Pa would not approve. And yet ... something about this walking man called to him. Some air of ... uniqueness, perhaps. Or, then again, maybe it was only the troubled set of his shoulders, the almost palpable air of loneliness that clung to him like a second skin that spoke to the observant, compassionate youth.  
  
Perhaps simply that and nothing more ...  
  
He could relate.  
  
Not even his clothes, the boy realized, explained all the strangeness The long trenchcoat that leant the stranger protection from the chill evening air of a brisk Kansas Fall day was Luthor Corporation all weather wear, he knew. Capable of keeping a man warm at either Pole or equally so on a blustery day like this one in Smallville, Kansas. Very expensive. And he recalled seeing that blue flannel shirt in an on-line Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue: Price? $89.95. And those stone washed soft denim jeans? $300, if they were a penny.  
  
By Smallville standards, he realized, the stranger was wearing a small fortune on his back.  
  
Clark Kent brought his foot down slowly on the brake, bringing the aged Ford pick-up to a halt on the dusty road.  
  
Seemingly torn between simply walking away and stopping, the walking man abruptly halted after a moment's indecision. Clark could see the other man's shoulders tense, as if for some possibly unpleasant encounter and then relax.  
  
"Could I give you a lift, Mister?" smiled the small town teenager.  
  
The green-gold eyes that peered at him from beneath hooded lids with long, smoke colored lashes were shields beyond which few men were allowed to gaze, young Clark suspected. Ageless and wary, they were impenetrable, glittering like fine polished jade. But in those endless depths something ancient and primal slept, boiling like lava, searching for release, mirroring great pain and aching aloneness just behind the irises where all the secrets hid.  
  
For long moments Clark Kent lost himself in those eyes.  
  
With lithe movements the older man folded himself into the truck's small cab. Clark did not miss the way he walked, though. Forward on the balls of his feet, as if he never wanted to be caught off guard or taken unaware. He moved, Clark decided, like Martha Kent's battered old vertern tom cat Streaky.  
  
With a groan of grateful relief the other man unlaced his boots and stretched his stocking feet. "Blast and damn!" he muttered in a strong British accent, "You'd think that after 300 years in the business they'd know how to craft a decent pair of hiking boots, but ...nooooooo ... "  
  
"You do a lot of walking?" inquired Clark. As good an icebreaker as any, he supposed.  
  
The flecks of gold in the center of those strange eyes gathered in the iris' and regarded him smoothly. Then came the disarming smile.  
  
"Everything's within walking distance, sooner or later," the other quipped, making Clark chuckle. "If you walk far enough ... "  
  
"So, where you headed?" the boy asked, curious.  
  
The hitchiker pointed forward, out the window of the battered vehicle.  
  
"That way."  
  
Clark frowned, a bit wary himself now at the seeming evasion. "And where are you from?"  
  
Silently, the older man pointed behind them, out the back window through the small dust cloud of their progress down the country road.  
  
"Back there."  
  
"O - kayyyy ... "  
  
Again the disarming smile flashed forth to work its magic. A hand extended itself in seemingly  
  
innocent friendship. Carefully, keeping his eyes on the road, Clark shook the proffered hand. It had a strange feel to it, he noted. Calluses in unexpected places. Suddenly, Clark recalled exactly where he'd shaken a hand like that before.  
  
Lex.  
  
Lex Luthor ... who liked to fence ...  
  
And wasn't that a rather queer tattoo on the inside of the guy's left wrist? Clark was sure he'd never see one quite like it before.  
  
"Adam Pierson," his passenger introduced himself in a smooth, cheerful voice. "I'm a ... researcher ... odd phenomena. Fascinating things. You people seem to have had more than your share of that, here in Smallville, I must say."  
  
Clark frowned. Visions of Chloe's "wall of weird" almost overwhelmed him.  
  
'It's all my fault,' he heard his own despairing voice confessing once again to Jonathan Kent, ' ... all my fault ... '  
  
"Pretty far from home, aren't you?" Clark opined, biting his lip. On the inside where no one could see it. He did not, of course, bleed. Anything to take his mind off his crushing guilt. "British?"  
  
The eyebrow that arched itself above the prominent aquailine nose was eloquent. "You ask a lot of questions, kid. That could get you into a quite a bit of trouble some day." Taken a bit aback, Clark held his silence.  
  
"Welsh, actually," Adam Pierson admitted, finally, keeping a merry tone of levity upper most in his finely modulated voice. "You'd be appalled at the difference." He sprawled back in the seat, gusting a deep sigh, seeminly the world's first entirely boneless man.  
  
"God, what I wouldn't give for a cold beer right now," he murmured piteously. He reluctantly pried open one shuttered eye and regarded Clark with a baleful glance, yet still brimming with hope. "I don't suppose you've got one, have you?"  
  
Clark blinked. "I don't drink." he said.  
  
The other man's answering sigh was redolent of disappointment and no small dollop of frustration.  
  
"Just my rotten luck to run into the only teenager in the Western world not attempting to pickle themselves in alchohol," he cursed.  
  
"Hey!" Clark hissed, setting his jaw.  
  
"Sorry kid," came the quick, contrite apology. "Just chalk it up to being old and peekish, okay?"  
  
Clark snorted his disbelief. "Old? You don't look all that old to me."  
  
This time that ready smile reeked of self mockery. The green-gold eyes danced with it merrily. "You'd be amazed, kid. You'd be amazed."  
  
It all happened much too fast for even Clark to stop it. One moment he glanced askence at his silent mysterious passenger, wondering if he'd been been very foolish to pick him up after all, and the next ...  
  
The next ...  
  
The next, he was slamming the brakes to avoid the startled deer suddenly caught in the middle of the road. And then he was flying through the windshield, over the hood of the truck, to land with a bone jarring thud in the verge on the side of the road.  
  
Right behind his passenger.  
  
In an instant, Clark leapt to his feet, brushing broken glass from his hair and clothing. He knew, of course, that he was completely uninjured, not a scratch on him. Naturally. But ... Adam Pierson? What of -- ??  
  
That was when he saw the other. Folded in a bloody heap about ten feet away, his arms and legs twisted at odd impossible angles beneath his torn body. He looked, Clark would later decide, like a child's carelessly discarded rag doll, abandoned and long forgotten in some dusty playroom corner, cast aside for newer, more intriging toys.  
  
"Oh God!" Clark cried, not wanting to believe the evidence of his eyes. "God, no .... Please God, no ... "  
  
In desperation the youth scrambled to the other's side and began applying CPR to the prone man, breathing life into his lungs, probing for a fluttering heartbeat.  
  
Nothing.  
  
"Come onnnn ... " Clark hissed, all prayerful insistence, " ... stay with me here! Don't do this to me, okay? Don't you dare die on me ...!"  
  
Clark gasped. Before his very eyes Adam Pierson's ugly, ragged wounds were ...  
  
Were ... were ...  
  
Closing ... healing themselves. He watched shattered bones grow and reknit themselves, becoming whole once more.  
  
With an inarticulate cry of alarm, Clark snatched his hands, still stained with Adam Pierson's crimson life's blood away, as if instinctively reluctant to touch flesh so strange and ... and ... alien ...  
  
Dear God! What was happenning here?  
  
He stared at his hands; at the blood still marring his long, supple fingers. Stared down at the rapidly closing wounds that only seconds before were great gaping holes torn in a bleeding, dying body. With a great starving gasp of inhaled air that made Clark's spine tingle and his nerves jump, Adam Pieson's green-gold eyes popped open wide and Clark fell into those ancient depths, as if into a raging river. With a small cry of revulsion, he jumped back and his flesh crawled. His fingers tingled where he'd touched the other. Horrified, Clark watched as the no longer dying man sat up with a groan and coughed up thick spittle the color of dark, dried blood.  
  
Lying his head on his knees for a moment, Pierson muttered, "I'm getting too old for this ..."  
  
Clark felt a brief flush of shame claim him as his hands curled into fists at his side rather than reach out and touch Adam Pierson once more.  
  
'Is - is *this* how others might feel about me ...if they knew the truth? Oh, God ... '  
  
"Who - who are you, Mister?" he breathed. "*What* are you?"  
  
The walking man's gaze snapped around to meet Clark's and his ancient eyes narrowed. Like a scapel he looked the teen up and down.  
  
"What I am ..." he began softly, "... isn't important right now. *You*, on the other hand ... " A small predatory grin spread slowly accross his formerly pleasant features. The green-gold eyes glittered hard as stones.  
  
Quickly, before the other could see his blue eyes widen in fear, Clark Kent looked away.  
  
"I don't know what you mean," he stammered.  
  
Adam Pierson towered to his feet, looming over the much younger man like a gathering storm cloud. Clark closed his eyes. He surprised himself that he did not flinch when the walking man touched him. Slowly, gently as a feather, Adam Pierson cupped the young boy's chin and turned him to face the truth.  
  
"What I mean, kid, is this: I *know* why I'm not dead. But why aren't *you*?" he hissed.  
  
Clark rallied himself. He had to pull together, here. "Should I be?" he questioned coolly. "Dead, that is?"  
  
"As the proverbial mackeral!" Adam insisted, equally chill. "Cut the crap, boy. I saw you go through the windshield. I *saw*!"  
  
Clark swallowed hard. Panic began to spread outward from his belly, cold and icy.  
  
"What the hell are you, kid?" the mysterious man inquired in a deceptively soft voice.  
  
A hurried whisper was his only answer.  
  
1.  
  
"I ... don't know what I am ... "  
  
Tasting the youths fear, Adam Pierson's eyes softened. Maybe he was going about this the wrong way? More flies with honey than vinegar and all that. Kneeling once more, he lay a comforting hand on the boys shoulder and squeezed.  
  
"I won't tell if you won't," he grinned.  
  
Clark ran his fingers through his dark locks in relief, nodding imperceptively.  
  
"Where did you learn to drive, anyway?" Pierson cracked rolling his neck and groaning.  
  
Clark's smile was wan. "On a farm," he replied, deadpan.  
  
The Immortal stood up, bushing off the seat of his trousers automatically. Spying the wrecked Chevy Blazer, he sighed.  
  
"Well, I hope you're a better mechanic than you are a chauffer, boy," he muttered. Leaving the youth to his own devices for the moment, the stranger circled the vehicle, lending an appraising eye. He pulled a long face, accenting his acquiline nose.  
  
"I think it's dead, Jim," he opined sadly.  
  
He wrinkled his nose at the look of confusion slowly spreading on the boy's smooth face.  
  
"Star Trek?" he demanded. "'Where no man has gone before'? Bones McCoy? Mr. Spock? Captain Kirk? The Enterprise? Is any of this ringing a bell?"  
  
Flushing a deep becoming red, Clark Kent shook his fifteen year old head.  
  
"Ummmmm ... "  
  
The ancient threw up his hands in quiet despair. "How soon they forget ... " he accused. Gusting another deep heartfelt sigh, Pierson cleared his throat.  
  
"What I meant to imply is that I don't think that lorry is going anywhere, kid."  
  
The boy scratched his night dark head. "It may not be as bad as it looks," the farm boy replied with caution.  
  
"It couldn't be," the other man snapped peckishly, patting his trenchcoat coat pocket, then cursing luridly when he withdrew a broken cell phone.  
  
"May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your lover's privates!" he swore in Aramaic, grinding the broken peices of the cell phone beneath his heel savagely.  
  
The boy turned the most vivid shade of startling crimson, he'd seen in well over a thou ... well, a very long time.  
  
"I - I - haven't got a lover," Clark stammered. Pierson had to smile. The boy certainly didn't sound any too happy about that ...  
  
The Immortal chuckled, looking the boy up and down with care. "How old did you say you were?" he asked.  
  
"Fifteen," came the soft, defensive reply.  
  
This time the laughter was open and full bodied. "That old?" the Immortal snorted. "No offense, child, but would you know what to *do* with a lover if you had one?"  
  
Clark looked downright glum for an instant. "No, I guess not," he admitted, stuffing his hands deep into his jeans pockets, "but I sure would like to find out ... "  
  
The laughter died stillborn on the Immortal's tongue. "I'm sorry," he apologised. "Believe me, I wasn't laughing at *you*, Clark," he addressed the youth by name for the first time. "I was laughting at *me* ... " The devilment in his green-gold eyes danced like fire. "It's been a very, very ... very ... long time ... " the older man sighed. "But not even *I'm* old enough to have forgotten what being so young was like. The dreams ... the *wanting* ... "  
  
"Yeah," Clark agreed in a wistfull voice. "It pretty much sucks."  
  
The Immortal took a step toward the overtuned vehicle, pasused, and then turned slowly to face the startled teen once more, his remarkable eyes narrowing in quick suspicion.  
  
"Since *when* does a small town Kansas teenager speak Aramaic?" he hissed through his teeth.  
  
Involuntarily Clark took a step back. With a flash and the singing of drawn, tempered steel, the youthful alien suddenly found himself confronted with a five foot broadsword no longer hidden beneath the long concealing trenchcoat and a man in whose hand it was, apparently, very comfortable.  
  
"Whoa!" cried Clark, standing his ground, now, but raising his hands, displaying his unarmed status. "Easy, Mister! You don't want to do anything rash, okay?"  
  
The sword never wavered. The hard, glittering eyes never softened. "I haven't lived this long by being a fool, boy," Pierson replied calmly. "You have exactly five seconds to explain yourself before I get up close and personal on your neck with this blade."  
  
Taking a deep breath, Clark Kent smiled affiably. "You can *try*," he said. "That is *if* you really want to break your sword." He frowned. "What kind of a headcase carries a sword around in their over coat anyway?"  
  
"A very cautious one," came the terse answer. "I'm still waiting for that explaination ... "  
  
Clark looked rueful. "I don't speak Aramaic," he admitted. "Well, not really... Just a little bit." He thought fleetingly of the mysterious disc retrieved from the craft that brought him to Earth and the enigmatic writing on its casing. "I - I just have an interest in weird languages, is all." He blushed bright crimson. "And - uh - well, I found some really great -ah - erotic poetry in Aramaic ... " The sentence trailed off with another fierce blush.  
  
Adam Pierson blinked. Mother of God! This .... this was just too artless and entirely too bizarre to be anything but the truth. He shook his smiling head and lowered his sword.  
  
"Did you read 'The Pleasure Houses Of Ur' by any chance?"  
  
The return smile was blinding in its intensity and virtually instaneous.  
  
"Oh, yeah!" enthused Clark. "That's one of my favorites!"  
  
"Mine, too," the walking man assured him and sheathed his sword.  
  
"None of which," Pierson reminded his new young friend, "comes anywhere near solving our problem of how to get out of here. I don't suppose you've got a cell phone, do you?"  
  
Clark shook his head.  
  
Taking a deep breath, the walking man frowned. "Any place about here with a phone?"  
  
Another negative shake of the dark head.  
  
Sighing, the man who was born with the name Methos lifted his booted foot in resignation.  
  
"Bloody Hell! Shoe Leather Express, then ... "  
  
"Ummm ... maybe not ... " Clark informed him.  
  
The ancient paused, blinking.  
  
"How do you figure that, kid?" he wanted to know. He pointed. "That lorry is most sincerely dead. And even if it isn't how can we get it back onto its wheels and on the road? Not likely without a tow truck or a few more people."  
  
The boy bit his bottom lip. Hard, if the Immortal was any judge. Pierson paused for an instant to wonder why the youth wasn't bleeding before he recalled clearly the youths remark about breaking his sword.  
  
"Did you mean that? About not telling, I mean?" Clark whispered.  
  
Intrigued, the oldest man in the world, nodded.  
  
Whereupon, the lanky boy walked over, causally picked up the half ton vehicle, carried it onto the road and set it upright.  
  
Adam Pierson's eyes widened until it was almost an actual physical pain. It was several moments before he noticed the look in the boy's blue eyes. That wide eyed look of panic.  
  
And the fear of rejection.  
  
The man who was born five thousand years ago with the name Methos closed his eyes. It never got any easier, did it? No, it most certainly did not. The revelation of such strangeness ... the waiting ... the hoping for acceptenace ...  
  
How well he knew those feelings struggling their way across the boy's open, guileless face. How very well he knew them. How many times had he done this, he wondered idely? A hundred? A thousand? He didn't even remember any more.  
  
'Time to run away, Old Man,' he could feel the urge rising within him. 'After all, that's what you do best, isn't it? Run away? Where to this time? China? Bora-Bora? Mongolia again?"  
  
No.  
  
"Yak butter plays hell with the digestion," he muttered.  
  
He spied the look of confusion clawing its way to the surface of that smooth young face and swallowed hard.  
  
For an instant in his mind's eye he saw another face. Long dark hair, black eyes full of pain and determination. A deep.soothing voice redolent with the sound of the Highlands like the smell of heather and green growing things ... saying goodbye ...  
  
I have to leave, Methos ...  
  
'Where are you, Duncan MacLeod? Are you happy? Are you safe? I hope so. If it weren't so tragic, I might laugh. You. Running away. Picking up MY bad habits, you bloody brooding Scots Boy Scout.'  
  
His hand trembled and so he hid it in a convenient pocket.  
  
'Just in time to teach me to hold my ground ... Imagine that.'  
  
So many, many goodbyes ...  
  
So very, very many.  
  
Well, not *this* time. Time to say hello instead.  
  
He opened his eyes and smiled, chuckling bright mirth.  
  
"Gods! I haven''t seen anything like that since Gilgamesh, kid! Think you could be related?"  
  
Clark blinked. But his return smile threatened to outshine the sun. "That's - that's as good a theory as any," he allowed. "Better than being from another planet, anyway," he muttered.  
  
Now it was Methos turn to be bewildered. "Another planet?"  
  
Clark took a shallow breath. "Yeah. Big meteor shower hit Smallville about twelve years ago. My foster parents found me in a spaceship that crashed in their cornfield." He ran his hands through his dark hair. "It's a long story."  
  
Methos snorted. "Not as long as mine, I'll wager." He shook his head. "Kid, I can truthfully say that not even in five thousand years have I ever heard a story quite like that one. And, believe me, I've heard some tall tales in my day. I started most of them, in point of fact."  
  
Clark stared. "*Five thousand years*? You're five thousand years old??" The astonished youth's jaw dropped.  
  
Grinning, Methos threw up his hands. "I know, I know," he smirked. "I don't look a day over three thousand. I have good skin." His face drained itself of all expression as he gazed off into the rapidly approaching sunset and the few bright stars peeking over the purple and gold horizon.  
  
"The *stars* have changed position since I was born," he whispered. "Everything changes. Everything ... dies ... Everything except me ... "  
  
He never heard the boy draw closer, for which he castigated himself harshly.  
  
'That's a good way to lose your head, you fool! What is it about this boy that makes you so stupid, I wonder?'  
  
No, his first sign that the young man had invaded his space only came when he felt that broad hand on his shoulder. For a moment, no more, their was silence and the warm feeling of compassion that passed between the two, the fifteen year old nascent Superman, lost and alone on a world not quite his own and the five thousand year old Immortal, crushed under the weight of his years.  
  
And then the silence was broken.  
  
"Did you really know Gilgamesh?" Clark's voice resounded with wonder. "I thought he was just a legend!"  
  
Methos grinned. "A legend in his own mind and that's a fact! Oh, Gilly was real enough. Most legends have some basis in reality, actually. Yes, quite real. And a crankier, more nasty tempered bastard you're never likely to meet, trust me on that." He slapped the farmboy on the back. Not too hard , of course. A broken hand would heal quickly enough, no doubt of that, but Methos had long ago learned to avoid pain when ever possible. Of course, once you'd been burned at the stake as a witch, or crucified as a "pervert" there wasn't much to excite one in that area was there?  
  
He winced inwardly at the thought. 'Damned puritanical Romans!' the thought was bitter. 'It wasn' my fault that little bastard couldn't keep his hands off me. I was his slave at the time! What was I supposed to do?  
  
I should have killed him when I had the bloody chance. At least then they'd have had a good reason for crucifing me. Lousy way to die ... and believe me, in five thousand years I've experienced most of them."  
  
"Hey!" the ancient enthused, pushing such morose thoughts aside with firm hands. "Do you like songs? I wrote a song about Gilly, once. Want to hear it?"  
  
":Sure!"  
  
Methos slipped an arm around the boy's shoulder and felt him relax into the comradely gesture. "While we walk, then." He gestured the boy forward with a sweeping motion of his free hand. "Lay on McDuff! And curst be he who first cries hold enow!"  
  
Stepping obediently forward, Clark groaned in a loud theatrical voice. "Gak! Shakespeare! I get enough of that in Lit class! PLEASE don't try and tell me you knew William Shakespeare, too!"  
  
Methos chortled. "Well, of *course* I knew Willy-Boy! Like a brother, I swear! Why, I'm the one who actually wrote 'Coriolanus', if the truth be known. Willy had a bad case of writers block, see, and he was dsperate for money, so ... "  
  
Clark's eyes narrowed in friendly suspicion. "No way!" he declared. "Not!"  
  
"Way." insisted Methos, enjoying himself hugely.  
  
The boy deflated almost like a balloon pricked with a sharp pin, his guileless eyes wide.  
  
"Really?"  
  
"No." Methos snickered, tightening his grip on the boy's broad shoulder. The grin broadened. "Actually that was Francis Bacon who ghost-wrote for Willy. We've got to work on this gullibility thing you've got going there, kid."  
  
'Careful, you ass!' he thought when he felt the boy respond to the touch. 'Things haven't changed *that* much in five thousand years. Periclean Athens this is *not*. Smallville Bloody Kansas and don't you forget it!'  
  
Clark manged to look skeptical, though it wasn't easy. "The song?" he reminded his new friend.  
  
Chuckling, Methos began to sing in a pleasnt enough baritone.  
  
"I remember guady days when the year was springing-  
  
Tammuz, Gilgamesh and I clicking cups and singing!  
  
Then in sauntered Inini, skimpy garments clinging -  
  
To her hips -- and things like that ...  
  
Tammuz left us winging!"  
  
Clark colored like flame, but the smile that claimed his features moments later was lascivous enough. Pleased, the Immortal continued.  
  
"Then we welcomed Enkidu when he came to Erech!  
  
He was rough as hickory bark -- nothing of a cleric!  
  
But his taste in beer and ale ... THAT was esoteric!  
  
And he used a drinking cup that would strain a derrick!"  
  
"Here comes my favorite verse," chuckled Pierson, and sang more loudly at Clark's answering smile.  
  
"Tammuz would have joined us, then, but he just been wedded!  
  
But Inini - BlAST THE WENCH! - hacked him as they bedded!  
  
Damn such honeymoon's as this - just the sort I've dreaded!  
  
For a drinking man is spoiled ... once he's been beheaded!"  
  
At this point Clark was laughing so hard he stumbled and almost fell. "I don't believe you!" he said. "Wasn't Gilgamesh supposed to be famous for his drinking and carousing? A real party animal kind of guy?"  
  
Methos rolled his eyes. "Don't believe everything you hear, kid," he advised. "Carosuing - yes. After a few lessons in the art from my humble self, Gilly was off and raising merry hell in the pleaure house like you wouldn't believe. The man had stamina, I'll give him that. Not much technique, mind you, but stamina to burn. But drinking? No. Like the song says; that was Enkidu." He hung his head in shame. "I failed there. Gilly couldn't hold his liquor worth a damn. One flagon of beer and he was three sheets wasted. It was tragic, really."  
  
"YOU taught Gilgamesh to - to - ah - carouse? Could you - well, could you - um - tea -" Then the blue eyes narrowed once more when he saw the twinkle dancing in the Immortal's green-gold eyes. "You are such a liar!"  
  
"Aboslutely!" Methos averred, laughing heartily. "I'm a famous liar. In fact, almost everything I tell you is probably a lie. Remember that, kid."  
  
Clark clutched his temples as if in pain. "But if you're lying when you say that anything you tell me is a lie, then you must be telling the truth ... but if you're lying then how can you be telling the truth? GAH! My head hurts," he moaned.  
  
Methos hand reached out and squeezed the wide young shoulder again. His mein grew solomn and quite serious, as if this next were very important.  
  
"But I'll never lie to you about anything important. I promise you that." He lowered his hand and proffered it to be shaken. "Deal?"  
  
"Deal," agreed Clark with an open smile. After a moment of silent walking the boy cleared his throat. "So," he inquied, "what should I call you?"  
  
"The name I was born with is Methos. But in five thousand yers I've had more names than even I can remember. At the moment I'm Adam Pierson. That will do, I suppose. It doesn't really matter what you call me. " He leveled a severe gaze at the boy. "But if you call me Grandfather Time, I *will* find a way to hurt you, kid. My word on that. Be warned." he said ominously.  
  
Clark snorted. "You wish!" he crowed.  
  
"Don't get cocky, kid," Methos warned.  
  
Clark glanced at the Immortal from the corner of his eye. "Um - about this carousing thing ... " he began in a hopeful voice.  
  
Methos sighed.  
  
  
  
  
  
The End?  
  
  
  
META:  
  
How to explain Methos? Utterly impossible. To begin with Methos is 5,000 years old. And he didn't survive that long by being a good guy. On the surface of it Methos is a cunnin, lying, manipulative bastard. And those are his *good* points:):) Highlander style Immortals hunt and kill one another. Decapitate one another with big swords. It's what they do. "There can be only one!" And Methos is determined it isn't going to happen to him:):)  
  
Methos is my choice for The One:):) Why? Simple. Because he's always about two steps ahead of any one else:):) One of the first things that we find out about Methos/"Adam Pierson" is that he has infiltrated The Wathers. The Watcher, as their name implies, watch. They watch and keep tabs on Immortals. The have a vast, secret organization to help them do this. They always know which Immortals are hunting who and where they are. Can you imagine a better place to hide? VBEG And it gets better:):) The Oldest Immortal is a coveted prize in The Game. Most Immortals think he's a myth:):) A fairy tale. But the Watchers aren't so sure. They have a special postion within the Watcher organization for the express purpose of tracking down Methos. The Keeper of the Methos Chronicle.  
  
Guess who?  
  
ROTFL:):)  
  
Yeppers! Y'all guessed it! Adam Pierson is the Keeper of the Methos Chronicle:):) Methos is in charge of locating himself!:):) And he makes sure, of course, that never happens.  
  
As dedicated as he is to his own survival, Methos has a soft spot for big brooding boy scouts. He saved Duncan MacLeod more than once at risk of his own life. Thus this fic:):) 


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